We (Mr. and Dr. Muttrox) took to the streets yesterday for the No Kings Rally/March in Atlanta. What did we think?
We arrived right at the opening bell (10:00 am). People were pumped; the attendance and atmosphere were excellent. They had just gotten permits approved, so we were going to march to the State Capitol at 1:00 pm.
The organizers and staff did a great job making sure everyone had water, access to bathrooms, first aid, and so on. They were careful to instruct everyone on how to respond to any provocateurs, and lawyers from several groups were also present, just in case. This preparation was smart. There was an obvious helicopter from Homeland Security, and an unidentified drone hovering over the crowds. I assume footage of us is now living somewhere in Palantir (I waved to every camera I could see), and ICE probably took pictures of everyones license plate.
The speeches for the first hour were… well, frankly, terrible. For every speaker who focused on the core theme of the rally (lawlessness, executive overreach), there were two who went on about trans rights, Palestine, billionaires, or something that had nothing to do with anything. I don’t know why the leader of the NEA was speaking; if I were a conservative teacher, I’d be angry at the obvious politicization.
After about an hour, we decided we were tired and hungry. We grabbed a quick bite, then headed to meet the marchers. Our timing wasn’t great though. We missed Abrams, Warnock, all the interesting speakers. And by the time we made it to the Capitol , most people had already left and they were just about to open the roads up again. Ah well.
This post is mostly just an excuse to share pictures of the interesting, “Yes, exactly!”, or funny signs. Mostly funny signs. Let’s get on with it!
The very first sign I saw, I was already giggling. I love dirty comedy.We were asked to wear yellow. My only yellow shirt was the standard University of Michigan shirt. This sign was a surprising popular sentiment, I got a lot of “Go Blue”s, and general college football small talk.
Some of the signs I thought were so clever turned out to be less original than I thought. The first “Faux-king” pun is great. The sixth is not. Many of these signs were duplicated in marches across the country.
An under-reported reason why Trump is manifestly unfit. He literally can’t read. Pete Davidson agrees!
Frogs were a theme. Why frogs? I gather that it’s a response to the Administration painting the Portland protests as terrorists. It’s hard to pretend that someone wearing a big inflatable costume is a terrorist.
That says Amphibians Against FacismThis one’s for you Chris. Atlanta being the headquarters of the CDC, there were a lot of signs about the mass firings of science folks.For my younger readers, this is a parody of a line from Animal House.
Not shown are several signs about Epstein. I also spotted three separate signs referencing The Lord of the Rings. Two were about Saurman and Wormtongue, one was a Palantir reference.
These people didn’t want their picture taken and pulled their neckwear and hats over their face. I don’t understand that. You’re at a public march, calmly sitting outside The Capitol with thousands of folks around, you’re going to get seen. That’s the point. Weird. This is for Dad. My 92 year old father wanted to attend, but is a little past that, physically. The police were out in force, but were very chill. They all saw it was a bunch of relaxed people enjoying the fall weather, no threats.
This was my favorite sign of the whole march. It’s so beside the point, so ridiculous, and all the funnier because of it. Classic. I laugh every time I look at it.
The winner. Ha ha!Well, it’s gotta end sometime. You know who’s going to vote for Trump again? All the commuters who were stuck in nearby streets. They weren’t allowed to proceed, they weren’t allowed to turn around. They had to just sit there for an hour, steaming. One of the protestors was yelling to the cars they were stuck there because of Donald Trump, that’s a stretch.
I am reading that attendance was well over five million people. That’s amazing. It was a great day. Despite the light tone of this post, this is important work. As this administration accelerates it’s anti-democratic goals and tactics with control of almost all government functions, one of the only ways to push back is popular support.
Today I finished The Dark Tower, Steven Kings epic answer to The Lord of the Rings. With 7 1/2 books totalling 4,300 pages, that took some time.
What does Muttrox think? Muttrox thinks it was pretty dang good! King said he always want to write a large epic, but at age 19 didn’t know how do it in his own voice. I’m glad he waited, because in a world filled with endless LotR knockoffs, he created something genuinely unique. King is a great writer, and the length of the books matches the length of the hero’s long journey.
Steven King is also a character within the story. That could have been done very badly. Fortunately it wasn’t, and the integration of real world events and the fiction of the story is woven together in a satisfying way if you accept the basic premise.
Was it perfect? No.
In the early books, Roland has soda for the first time and can’t believe how good it is. He gets 300 bullets, more valuable to him than gold. He gets basic aspirin to help with his illness. But by book four, his ammo is infinite, he drinks soda and eats candy with no reaction. Despite going back to earth multiple times, the characters never try to get more bullets, better guns, better medicines, or really anything from Earth that might be useful. It’s a switcheroo away from a bit of nice realism and back to the cliches of fantasy journeys. This bothered me more than anything else!
Then there are three main opponents – Walter, Mordred, and The Red King. Each is built up over hundreds of pages. Their removal from the board is unsatisfying in each case. It feels similar to Game of Thrones, where characters need to be removed so the author can get to the end of the story already.
Many people disliked the ending. Like the removal of the nemeses, it feels anti-climactic as if all the work before didn’t much of anything. That is, there’s not a sense of payoff. Meh. Whatever, it’s hard to know what ending could have satisfied.
Nevertheless, I am a fan. 11/22/63 is one of my favorites, I’m glad I read this saga (is the movie any good?), and I’m looking forward to my next non-horror Steven King book.
As usual, it is the Trump and the GOP who decide to take the next step to degrade American Democracy. At Trumps direction, Texas is stepping away from the every ten years rule in the Constitution (Article I, Section II) to redistrict. The timing, which seems obviously unconstitutional to me, is so the changes will favor Trump. The redistricting is obvious and nakedly partisan, the whole point is to get another five GOP seats. There is no mystery of what’s going on, no one is trying to hide the motives and goals.
The Democrats have had enough. When the other team cheats, you start cheating too. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Now New York and California are looking at doing identical disgusting tactics in retaliation. Meanwhile the GOP looks to extend the same strategy in their other states.
This quote is dead-on: “The Texas Republicans are taking us on a race to the bottom,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who lamented in an interview that his party must reluctantly participate in “this rotten system.”
It’s a great movie. It’s Top Gun: Maverick, but with cars instead of planes. I mean that in a good way.
Question 1: Who is the best racer? a) Sonny Hayes (F1) b) Cole Trickle (Days of Thunder) c) Lightning McQueen (Cars) d) Ricky Bobby (Talledega Nights) e) Dom Toretto (Fast and Furious) f) Speed Racer
The movie spent serious money on licensing music. As a classic rock guy, Whole Lotta Love and We Will Rock You stood out, with a bit of Billy Squier in the background. But that made me wonder:
Question 2: As long as you’re hitting up Queen songs, why not drop I’m in Love with My Car? And then there’s I Can’t Drive 55 or Going Mobile… actually those would be quite cheesy in the film. Question 2 is retracted!
Question 3: Who would be best at running the race strategy for an F1 team – Sonny Hayes (the Brad Pitt character in F1), or Billy Beane (the Brad Pitt true character from Moneyball)?
Urban Deli in Stockholm, Sweden, is the worst hotel I’ve ever encountered. (I’m excluding discount motels and last second we-have-a-coupon-somewhere hotels. This is a “regular” hotel, right in the city center.)
First the good: Urban Deli has good ratings (4.5 on Trip.com and Google, 4.3 on Trip Advisor). And credit where credit’s due: the staff were professional and helpful, everything was clean. The operations ran without a hitch. My issue isn’t with the people or the upkeep. It’s the design of the rooms and the hotel itself that was so bad.
Can you find Reception?
Let’s start at the beginning. The hotel name is not Urban Deli. Urban Deli is a chain of delis in city centers. The hotel is called “Hotel Urban Deli”, or the Hotel at Urban Deli, or similar. It’s a distinction that is lost on me. Why pair a hotel with a deli — who wants to live in a deli?
Who puts a steep spiral staircase down to the rooms? Urban Deli!
Urban Deli aggressively aims for a “super cool, hip, and youthful” vibe. Because I like to feel young and cool when I’m purchasing meat. It’s confusing. This theme, or lack thereof, extends throughout. There’s pop art liberally splashed on the walls, and the hallway carpeting leading to my room had color offsets that showed, and I can’t unsee this, people’s clothes coming off. As if guests can’t wait to make it to their room before starting the disrobing and getting it on. What the hell is in that deli meat.
Location, location, location!
All the rooms are underground. You’d think a hotel housed in a beautiful building in a beautiful city would make that visible. Instead, you descend to the basement to reach your room. They should have put the deli downstairs and kept the hotel rooms above street level.
To get to the hallway you “badge in”. Unfortunately, the reader and button were hidden behind a plant. A little hotel scavenger hunt before you even get to your room. This kind of thoughtless design is the core problem. All their design decisions make life harder for guests.
The room itself feels less like a hotel room and more like a bunker. In Europe the rooms are very small. Two feet of floor space on either side of the bed is fairly normal. But, there are no windows. Someone chose to put this hotel underground, so no windows. The lights are not very bright, adding to the oppressive feel. It has a “solitary confinement” aesthetic, where one contemplates their mistakes while awaiting sentencing.
There was no desk. There was no chair. No wastebasket.There was nowhere to work. Instead, there were two small shelves surrounded by piping art (because why not, pipes are cool I guess). I did my work leaning over a 6-inch deep shelf, hoping my laptop wouldn’t fall off.
Oh, but the pipes! The aesthetic! So worth it to do my work while getting scoliosis!
(I was told by a colleague that you weren’t supposed to stay in your room, the rooftop was the cool hangout spot. Unfortunately, it was closed.)
Of course the WiFi is unprotected. Urban Deli, where everyone can see your passwords.
The room lighting was a brain teaser. There were three banks of switches, two of which can only be reached by lying down on the bed. These three different banks have three different arrangements of switches, and most of the switches are unlabeled. Marilyn Vos Savant would have been stumped. And just to add another layer, the bathroom light controls weren’t actually in the bathroom. They were controlled from underneath the bed or by the door in the other room, literally the farthest point away from the bathroom. What the bleepty Mcbleep?
I wonder what all these mystery switches do
The Bathroom
Ah, the bathroom. With the main room small enough to high-five both walls while lying in bed, the bathroom was twice as big as it needs to be. It’s an interesting allocation of square footage. One imagines the design meeting: “Should we give them more space to sleep, or more space to wee wee?”
For those unfamiliar with European travel, partially enclosed shower areas with small glass panels are quite common. Urban Deli went one better by using curtains with barely enough room to turn around to really scratch that claustrophobic itch.
It is also common to have the shower water spill directly on the main bathroom floor. The floor was slightly tilted towards a drain. But the drainage couldn’t keep up with the water flow. Five minutes into my shower water had spread across half the floor and I had to cut it short.
They did provide a small towel, presumably intended as a bathmat. It was nicely folded on the shower rod, which seemed helpful until I realized I had to move it to close the curtain. But where to move it, there was nowhere to put the towel. Putting it on the now-flooding floor made no sense. There wasn’t a hook or any other logical spot. Let’s repeat that, there wasn’t a hook for towels small or large. A simple hook, a universal symbol of towel-holding, apparently didn’t make the cut of these architectural engineers.
Toilet Trouble
Let’s talk about the toilet. It looks normal enough at first glance, what could possibly be wrong?
How does anyone screw up the toilet user interface in 2025?
Well, the flushing mechanism isn’t on the side, or anywhere easily reachable. It’s positioned directly behind the lid. This meant you literally can’t flush the toilet without putting the lid down first. Look we’ve already mastered toilet design. This is a solved problem. Urban Deli is sticking with chopsticks.
In Contrast
I moved to the Hotel Birger Jarl. It was the only time in my life I’ve ever left one hotel for another. Can you spot the differences?
Natural light. Enough artificial light to see. A pleasant view. A comfortable work area, with a desk, chair, charging ports, wastebasket.A bathroom with obvious places for towels, a non-claustrophobic shower that drains, a standard toilet.
Is it really so hard to design a hotel? Urban Deli started over from first principles and failed.
Postscript: Colleagues took me to the Urban Deli rooftop later in the week. It was pretty awesome.
But not awesome enough. I look forward to never stepping foot in Urban Deli Hotel again.
Not looking good. Q1 was 7.5%. All liberals hate Tesla now, and Republicans haven’t changed their tune.
Politics
The election interference case against Trump in Georgia will not be decided against him in 2025.
Very confusing. Six charges were removed, Fani Willis was dismissed from the cast, not sure if a sitting president can be indicted, but the case is still alive.
Congress passes no significant legislation about immigration.
Why bother? Congress is sitting back and letting Trump do whatever he wants. Law, schmaw.
There is at least one real threat of government shutdown in 2025.
Nothing so far with Trump in power, though there was one while he was still taking power. This was a bad prediction… shutdowns are a technique by Republicans to exert leverage when the Democrats are in power. Democrats just don’t do this when Republicans are in power.
No major Democrats are indicted for crimes related to their political activities.
So far so good.
At least two of these four get confirmed (Pete Hesgeth for Defense, RFK Jr for Health and Human Services, Tulsi Gabbard for Director National Intelligence, and Kash Patel at the FBI):
Every single one confirmed. Every single one terrible… amazingly enough Gabbard might be the best of the lot.
Randoms
One of these three people will die in 2025: Clint Eastwood, Alan Greenspan, Mel Brooks.
So far they are all doing good.
Muttroxia will have a month with four or more posts after January.
Yes, I did four in April, mostly to win this prediction.
Why does this award even exist? Many internet sites claim it was a cunning strategy invented in the middle of last century by Red Aurebach. By keeping a starter player on the bench, he could maintain pressure throughout the game for more wins. Or perhaps it was to soothe egos. Frank Ramsey was a good player, he was a starter-level player. The whole “6th man” concept kept him satisfied with coming off the bench.
Either way, it was an idea built around that particular Celtics team’s lineup and how it related to the rest of the league. It doesn’t scale. It’s not the 1960s. Most teams today don’t happen to have the talent level fall off between positions six and seven. In todays NBA more stars take nights off or have reduced minutes, so player number six plays more and starts more games than in those days.
But mostly, the logic just doesn’t add up. If a team is so deep that a player who would start on most teams comes off their bench instead, that player is a good candidate for the 6th man.
Payton Pritchard is good enough to be starting for most teams in the NBA. But he happens to have Derrick White and Jrue Holiday starting in front of him. That’s great for the Celtics. It’s not so great for Payton Pritchard since he doesn’t get to start. But at least it makes him a leader for sixth man of the year award. Two years ago, Malcolm Brogdon was also coming off the bench behind White and Holiday. Brogdon became the sixth man of the year. That is not because Brogdon and Pritchard are particularly bad or particularly great players – they are both good players who just happened to be on a stacked team at that position so they had to come off the bench.
The 6th man award is actually the “best player not quite enough good to start because the team is loaded” award. That’s not so great an achievement. It’s an achievement of the front office who built the roster, not the individual player. If Jrue Holiday is traded/dumped next year for salary cap reasons, Pritchard will go from an NBA award winner to a non-award winning guard on an amazing team. Yay?
Anyhow — I approve of most but not all of the below “2029” ideas. I was challenged for more detail. Challenge accepted!
Eliminating Citizens United: Yes. Anything that reduces the influence of money on politics is good. The richest man in the world who also cares about politics (Elon Musk, duh) shouldn’t have such a huge influence, but it was awful before he showed up. I am in favor of anything that improves the voting and electoral process (two of my four priorities fit under that).
Doubling Minimum Wage: Yes, okay, I guess. Generally, I am in favor of income/wealth redistributive policies from the richer to the poorer, this fits under that. The minimum wage is weird. Basic economics says it is a bad idea, yet none of the bad things materialize when it’s tried. Given that, why not increase it. I have no idea if doubling is an appropriate amount, and how do you account for higher wage cities vs rural America etc.. but all that is second order.
Removing Presidential Immunity: Of course. It’s amazing that we need to reassert the President is not a king, the law still applies. C’mon.
Breaking up Massive Corporations: No. I haven’t seen a convincing case for it, in a way that also recognizes the many goods that come from massive corporations. As a sub-bullet, I feel strongly we should re-legislate what a corporation is. Corporations are legal fictions, not people. We can legislatively define them however we want, what rights and privileges they get.
SCOTUS Term Limits: Yes, 100%.
Expanding SCOTUS to 13: Nope. Don’t see a reason for it. It will just make everything worse. Liberals who think this will solve anything are crazy.
Taxing Mega Churches: All religious profit institutions that can’t follow the law and stay out of the secular world should have their tax-exempt status removed. As was starting to happen in the Obama administration. Other than that, I don’t see the point of this. If this was a broader policy around re-thinking non-profits in general I might change my mind (see above about corporations).
Women’s Healthcare Rights: I assume this is the latest code phrase for legalized abortion. Yes.
Banning Right-to-Work Laws: No. I don’t see the case for it. I live in a right to work state, no one here is particularly repressed and the economic benefits are real.
Amendment for Marriage Rights: I don’t know what this is.
Reversing Global Warming: Yes.
Medicare for All: It’s a fine partial solution to the health care mess in America. There are lots of other things that would help, this is as good as any. At least it’s feasible.
Assault Weapons Bans: Meh. I don’t think this is the real problem. Focus ought to be on enforcing current laws, background checks, a general re-balancing of what is allowed… this is one little bit that doesn’t matter much. And it’s crazy hard to define, enforce, stirs up massive opposition, etc. Not something to focus on.
Progressive Taxation (added by poster): 100% yes. But we already have this, not sure why it would need to be on a platform.
I don’t really get what this 2029 list is all about. It’s presumably a response to the project 2025 plan. This is an odd way to frame since the 2025 plan was disowned by Trump and most of the GOP even as they now follow many of the recommendations. That is, although the 2025 plan is public, it was meant to be kind of a secret. It’s a war plan. It’s the quiet part out loud. This list of 2029 priorities looks like it is meant to be a platform, a rallying cry, it’s on Facebook. Or maybe not, it’s hard to tell. After all, most of the items here are things that have been Democratic priorities for decades. Maybe it came from this Op-ed. But that oped is um… well… smart. This 2029 plan isn’t. Even though I agree with most of it, it’s just a grab bag of stuff, and seems designed to lose any general election.
All NBA predictions refer to the 2024/2025 season that ends June 2025.
The NBA MVP will once again be Nikola Jokic. (I drafted that a couple weeks ago. SGA is now the favorite, but I’m sticking with Jokic. His stats are better this year than last year, c’mon.)
The Thunder win the Western Conference. Sorry Nuggets, Rockets, Grizzlies – there is one elite team in the West and it’s the Thunder.
The Cavaliers or Celtics win the Eastern Conference. Sorry Knicks, Bucks, 76ers – there are two elite teams in the East and it’s these two. I went back and forth on The Celtics – it’s very easy to see how they could win it all, and it’s also easy to see them getting knocked out in the second round (they might meet the Cavs before the conference finals), in the end I’m not predicting anything for them.
The Oklahoma City Thunder will be in the NBA finals three of the next five years . They are already one of the best teams out there and have a sickening amount of high draft picks and cap space over the next few years. This won’t be settled for a few years of course.
The Atlanta Hawks will continue to be mediocre or worse. Sorry, I don’t buy the hype. Last year I correctly predicted they would be under 55%, and they ended the calendar year just below that. The prediction is that they will finish the 2024/2025 season at 60% or less. That is, they might improve slightly in the back half of the season, but not much.
The NBA All Star game will continue to suck. You can play with the format all you want, but the stars still don’t want to play hard.
Payton Pritchard will win the sixth man award, the stupidest of all NBA awards.
The New England Patriots win two more games in 2025/26 season than in 2024/25. The Patriots finished 4-13, so I predict them to win 6 or more games next season. This is a combination of Maye getting better, getting a decent coach (please be Vrabel), and regression to the mean. Update: They did hire Vrabel. That’s worth a win or two, and they have a great draft pick, let’s be optimistic and predict 8 wins.
Bijan Robinson will have over 1,500 yards in 2025/26: (He had over 1,7000 this year so this is not a longshot. But Pennix is passing more and more, they won’t have to relay on Robinson as much.
Saquon Barkley will have less than 2,000 yards in 2025/26. Regression to the mean again.
The Economy
My hypothesis is the economy under Trump won’t change much. It’s been consistent since 2010 (excluding the pandemic and aftereffects). Trump will change his mind about many ideas, won’t be able to make them happen, or they won’t matter that much.
Inflation does not increase much in 2025. Although Trump comes to office explicitly planning policies which increase inflation, it won’t happen. The post-pandemic inflation bubble will continue deflating (in the USA as everywhere). Prediction is that the average for 2025 will be between 2.3% and 3.5%. Source.
The Misery Index will stay below 7 in 2025. The Misery Index is the sum of unemployment and inflation. Despite Trump’s terrible policy ideas, the American economy will continue to hum along. Trump was handed a great economy, he won’t screw it up much.
Electric car sales finish above 10% in 2025 Q4. Even if all incentives are removed, that won’t happen until 2026. Many consumers will buy now, while the tax credit is in place.
Politics
The election interference case against Trump in Georgia will not be decided against him in 2025. That weird phrasing is because I think the likeliest outcome is it all falls apart somehow, and the next most likely is that it is delayed past 2025.
Congress passes no significant legislation about immigration. Why start now?
There is at least one real threat of government shutdown in 2025. (Holy cow, there was already one before Trump even took office. WTF.)
No major Democrats are indicted for crimes related to their political activities. That is, while Trump and the FBI may go after his various enemies, none of them will be formally indicted. (If they are indicted for the usual corruption that doesn’t count, only political activities.)
At least two of these four get confirmed… Trump owns the GOP, they won’t push back. The picks are Pete Hesgeth for Defense, RFK Jr for Health and Human Services, Tulsi Gabbard for Director National Intelligence, and Kash Patel at the FBI.
Randoms
One of these three people will die in 2025: Clint Eastwood, Alan Greenspan, Mel Brooks.
Muttroxia will have a month with four or more posts after January. I’m switching it up! I’ve always taken the under.
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